Some post-think

Hotel Taj: icon of whose India? by Gnani Sankaran

As the Terrors Die: The Terror of the Aftermath by Biju Mathew

Update, 2 Dec:

Defeat or victory determined by response by Amitav Ghosh

Ghosh too wants us to stop invoking 9/11. My only quibble with him is that, as Sankaran points out, the attacks were not confined to the "upscale parts of the city". Though the media very well created that impression. When I read online that hospitals had been attacked, I messaged my brother, shaken to the core. Since our television channels were focusing elsewhere, he didn't know this and was shocked.

Update, 13 Dec:

The monster in the mirror by Arundhati Roy

Mumbai attacked

Yesterday, when I first heard about the Mumbai attacks, I didn't feel anything. Or maybe I felt - small feelings. Nothing that compared to the immensity of the tragedy. I slept, woke up, and the situation in Bombay was still out of control. And I started wondering about my small feelings. You know the reasons. Emotional deadening. Too much exposure to acts of violence. Too much senselessness.

But that I felt small made me feel small. This is not me, this person who can intellectually understand the enormity of what has happened, what is happening, but does not feel shattered, I thought. Or is it me.

I am thousands of miles away from India. Surreal.

Dissociation. At some point, I began obsessively reading the news. Clicking on the refresh button of news sites, reading the same thing over and over again, or in different words. And then a friend emailed: "my thoughts are with you. I can't imagine what you are going through."

And something became huge inside me. Some place of tears.

What makes that fear that terror our own? Because if at all things are to change, we have to own all of it.